There are 24 hours in a day. No more and no less. It doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO of the largest corporation or a school cleaner. However, moms are in a unique category. A mom is supposed to be all things to all people and accomplish miracles on a regular basis. The smartest filing system for busy moms is user-friendly and helps her to achieve these miraculous challenges each and every day.
Picture any mother. She has to be a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter, an auntie, a friend, a chauffeur, cook, cleaner, dishwasher, record keeper, money manager and all-round multitasking super mom. This list is more than enough to exhaust a regular person and it doesn’t even include time for sleep, rest or hobbies.
Busy Moms Need Help to Get Organized
Think about your own circumstances. You may be a man or woman. Either way, you probably agree that moms need some help. The great news is that modern, versatile filing system software can help reduce the amount of time needed to accomplish some of these tasks. This time can then be focused on more important things. A filing system isn’t necessarily a grey shabby-looking filing cabinet with a bunch of messy old papers stuffed inside.
Filing systems are already used for so many purposes in every day life which aren’t recognized as filing systems. Your computer has files and folders in different places probably saved in a haphazard fashion on your hard drive with some things misfiled or duplicated because you’ve lost track of them. The shoebox in the cupboard has a pile of paid bills. That’s a file. A book shelf files books. That’s also a file. As is the shelf under the DVD recorder.
Make Life Easier
Anything that needs to be stored is a form of filing. Why not make life much easier? When you receive something, you have to make a choice. Action it, archive it for future retrieval if necessary or throw it out. As a mom, think of all the things you have to keep. It’s hard enough remembering where everything is, let alone trying to find something that another member of the household has put away because they think differently.
Kids’ school reports, paid bills, outstanding bills, bank statements, warranties, CDs, DVDs, legal certificates for birth, marriage, divorce, business names, mortgage details, important contact details for family and friends, kids toys, copies of wills and powers of attorney, medical records, insurance details, photos in albums, prescriptions, employment records, tax records and the list goes on and on. You could even keep a file for all the clothing each family member has so you don’t waste money needlessly.
Picture your home as it is today. Ninety-five percent of the time, stuff will be strewn throughout the house. It’s poor mom’s job to find the lost assignment due today. It’s also her job to make breakfast, prepare lunches for the kids, write a couple of checks, pay some bills, remember to ring Aunt Dorothy for her birthday, order some flowers to be sent to her, give the kids their pocket money and to juggle all these tasks simultaneously.
Would you remember them all? Probably not! It’s time to give mom a helping hand! Using smart filing system software, she can create one simple way to organize everything that needs filing and storing, no matter where it is in the house, the garage, the shed, or in storage.
Instead of using an old fashioned alphabetical system, she can use one where all titles are specific to what they record. For example – bills can be divided into power, telephone, rates, school fees, etc., but can be grouped together as paid or unpaid. They could be filed in monthly, quarterly or yearly or however you want them to be filed.
Your huge DVD collection could be sorted according to genre. CDs can be done the same way. You could have different numbered boxes and make that number part of the title. Kids’ reports and school work could be under their names or categories and sub categories. It doesn’t really matter what you call them.
Standardize the Way You Store Things
It doesn’t matter where you store things. The main aim of using an indexed filing system is to standardize so you and your whole family can easily retrieve things without wasting hours searching the house from top to bottom.
Some things may be in a filing cabinet if they’re documents. Some may be in drawers, boxes, hanging files, under beds, in the shed or garage, or perhaps stored outside of the residence. If a busy mom can save time when she puts things away and retrieves them again, think of how much free time she’ll have to do other things or simply to have a well deserved rest.
Motherhood is the hardest job in existence and it isn’t even a salaried position! So why on earth shouldn’t moms be able to use the same system that corporations use to save time and money?
Access can be restricted to whoever needs it. Hard copies of the index can be printed off and given to each family member or posted in a convenient place. Perhaps store a copy offsite at a friend’s house or at the bank, along with copies of all vital documents and a backup of all computer files.
Mom can run the household like a business and keep track of things more efficiently. A smart document management system can be the foundation for really getting the household organized properly once and for all.
The Paper Tiger Document Management Software and Filing System — the smartest filing system for busy moms will create a whole new way of life in which there is less stress and more time for the things that really count.
Tags: busy moms, get organized, Productivity, The Paper Tiger 'Finding' Filing System
What a great idea! I tend to think of Paper Tiger as a tool for businesses, but households also have lots of information that needs to be organized, so why not take advantage of the technology that’s available?
Janet,
Absolutely! There are so many uses for The Paper Tiger. You can see a sampling of the versatility of this software in the blog post outlined by Stephanie Calahan, Professional Organizer & Productivity Life Coach of Calahan Solutions and one of our Paper Tiger Experts: http://www.thepapertiger.com/blog/2009/07/01/the-many-uses-of-paper-tiger-part-1-of-3/
Thanks! The Paper Tiger Team
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